SlackerHacker

Hi,

My name is Warren Draper, I’m a regular contributor to Tom Hodgkinson’s ‘The Idler’ magazine – which I guess makes me a writer and an idler.

Though compared to my father (who retired at 26 and has been happily unemployed for nearly 50 years) and grandfather (a convicted safe-cracker who blagged his way into becoming an architectural surveyor on the ‘Dome Of Discover’ for the 1951 Festival of Britain even though he couldn’t draw a circle) I was never truly committed to idling – until now.

'Grandads' dome

For years I tried my best to live a ‘normal’ life (as normal as possible for a freegan, eco-freak living in a former coal-mining town) and have (almost) always been in full-time employment, but when my family and I lost our home in the recent economic downturn (as chronicled in The Idler 42: Smash the System) I began to seriously re-evaluate my life.

I came to realise that beyond shelter, companionship, a full belly and a comfortable pair of shoes everything else is simply entertainment. And, more importantly, we’re creating a whole world of hurt just to be entertained.

On paper the situation looks pretty bleak – poverty, climate change, peak oil, inequality, war, injustice, violence, greed, etc., etc., etc. – and so, in desperation, well-intentioned people are running around like headless chickens trying to “Save the world!”

But the incessant waves of new technologies, old technologies, innovations, presentations and carbon neutralisations are only confusing the issue. The simple truth is that if you want to do more for your planet (and its people), DO LESS!

Consume LESS, eat LESS, work LESS, own LESS, build LESS, waste LESS and, whatever you do, watch a lot LESS TV!

Get Idle!

This is a finite planet, but there are resources enough to cater for everyone’s real needs. The sustainable world is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed yet. We are creatures that evolved to become creators; we betray our own humanity when we allow ourselves to become consumers. If you want to live more by doing less then you need to take responsibility for as much of your own life as possible (rather than pay some other greedy bugger for the privilege). From personal experience I can guarantee that you can do a lot more than you think.

Go check out AfriGadget, you’ll find kids who’ve built their own radios from scrap, a boy who built his own wind turbine from old bike parts and a guy who built a phone charger from a toilet! These everyday geniuses create wonders from waste. They display a level of ingenuity that puts your average iPad weilding uber-geek to shame. Just imagine if these guys had access to the kind of waste that western society generates.

We, of course, do have access to that ‘waste’. And with a little sweat and inspiration we can use it to make our lives easier. If you take care of your own food, your own energy and your own technology then you spend a lot less money, which means you can also spend less time working for the man.

So this blog is dedicated to the philosophies, strategies, ideas and innovations that can make life easier (and cheaper…) for idlers everywhere – and which also happen to be a lot easier going on the environment.

I’m not advocating hair-shirt abstinence (though if you’re the kinda person who can’t live without a 52″, LCD, 3D, HD, DVD, LED, LSD, ID, Do-Bi-Bleeding-De, TV then you’re probably not gonna find happiness on this blog site – or anywhere else for that matter); not only can you survive on less, but you’ll quickly learn to thrive on less.

So slow down, take it easy and CHILL for CHANGE!

Shine always,

Warren